What led you to become involved in the events industry ? There was definitely no grand plan . I acted in some shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in the late 90s and fell in love with the festival and the ‘ pop-up ’ nature of so many of the festival venues . That led me to start a small little Fringe venue called Underbelly when I was a student at Edinburgh University . And from those small Edinburgh venues Underbelly has grown over the years to encompass some fairly large live events , festivals and shows as well .

How , when and why was Underbelly born ? In 2000 , at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe , in some very dingy bank vaults . I ’ d brought some shows up to the festival with friends and we wanted to find an atmospheric venue of our own to present them in . It was incredibly shambolic , we

had no idea what we were doing , but the shows were great and our venue was really raw and ‘ festival ’ in feeling . We created good pop-up bars . We just began expanding what we did at the festival every year and then later moved into other city centre live festivals and events . In 2000 , we probably sold a couple of thousand tickets , whereas in 2019 we sold just over 1.4 million tickets to our festivals , shows and events . Long may that return !

Do you still perform ? Absolutely not . No one needs that .

Whose idea was it to use a purple cow as a venue ? The upside-down purple cow has actually been our brand logo since 2002 . But we have a couple of comedians and a late-night drink to thank for our actual purple cow venue . We were telling them about our plans to build a big top-style performance venue for the 2006 Edinburgh Festival and one of them said why don ’ t you make it purple and put a head , legs and udders on it , and it will be your brand . So Violet the purple cow was born .

Who or what has been the biggest influence on you in the events industry ? Going to Glastonbury for the first time in the early years of Underbelly was definitely a fairly seminal moment . I just remember coming over the hill and looking down across the site and not quite being able to comprehend the scale of it all . The weekend there summed up everything I love about the live entertainment and events industry – scale , creativity , giving people a good time , the friendliness of crowds and giving people a real ‘ live ’ experience .

What is the first career highlight that comes to mind ? Launching Violet the purple cow at the Edinburgh Festival in 2006 was a big step for us . It suddenly put us front and centre at the festival and so many artists have subsequently performed in her , from Joan Rivers to Tim Minchin to Yoko Ono to … the list goes on . She ’ s got a great back catalogue of artists .

Ed will be speaking at the Event Production Show on 27 May .